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Colour

Have you thought about colour?

Colour is a sensation that we experience through our eyes with our brain.

Dulux is the world's largest paint company and we pride ourselves on our knowledge and understanding of all aspects of colour and design. Through our brands and products we aim to encourage everyone to realize the power of colour. Our purpose is to inspire and enable the world to decorate more easily and more often. We understand the practical, emotional and uplifting effect that colour can have on our customers, consumers and their communities across the globe.

At AkzoNobel we use our understanding of colour to describe it in a more user-friendly way. Colour, as perceived by the human
brain through the eye, is tri-dimensional. One way of describing these three components is in terms of the hue, light reflectance value (LRV) and chroma.

Colour Harmonies
Colour Harmony can be defined as pleasing arrangement or combination of colours. It engages the viewer and creates an inner sense of order, a balance in the visual experience. When something is not harmonious, it is either boring or chaotic. What appeals to one person, may be repellent to another. When it comes to colour theory, Swiss artist Johannes Itten, who is associated with the Bauhaus movement, has been one of the most influential people in the 20th century, along with Wilhelm Ostwald and Albert Munsel. Their efforts to break down the phenomenon of colour into bit size concepts are useful to this day.

Monochromatic Scheme
It relies on a single colour. Visual interest and depth are created by applying different shades to every surface. Significant differences in saturation and brightness can be done while staying in the single realm of colour. Since monochromatic schemes are easy on eyes and hardly need any interpretation, its easy to think of it as a be-all-and-end-all solution.

Analogous Scheme
It uses colours that are adjacent to each other on the colour wheel. One colour is chosen as the dominant colour, while others are used to enrich the scheme. This scheme is similar to the Monochromatic but offers more nuances because it sidesteps from the dominant colour. With green and blue, the impression of water nuances is an added bonus.

Complementary Scheme
It basically consists of two colours that are opposite of each other on the colour wheel. This scheme works well when a warm colour is juxtaposed with the cool colour. The complementary colour to one of the primary colours is always the mixture of the other two.